Acquiring Crucial PhD Skills

The main question this workshop centers around is: what does it take to become successful in academia? The aim is to increase the personal academic effectiveness and efficiency of starting academic researchers.

Participants are guided along three lines:

1. Understanding:

• What skills do you need in academia?
• The crucial academic skills addressed are research, writing, presentation, time management, collaboration, and persistence. These skills are required in any academic discipline.

2. Reflection:

• how good are your current skills?
• What are your current personal strengths and weaknesses?
• How important are these for your research project?

3. Improvement:

• How to get better skills?
• Which improvement is when needed?
• How can you realize the improvements?

During the workshop by Dr. K.R.E. (Eelko) Huizingh, participants develop concrete ideas for skills improvement. In a stepwise manner, they prepare their Personal Academic Development Plan which identifies the skills they need to improve, and how and when they will improve those skills.

Learning outcomes

The workshop Academic Talent Development aims at preparing the participants to deliver high quality academic work.

At the end of the workshop, the participants:

• understand which skills are needed in academia.
• have insight in their current personal skills in relation to their research project.
• are aware of the specific skills that they need to develop further in order to succeed in their research project.
• know how specific skills can be improved and how they can notice skills improvements.
• have developed a Personal Academic Development Plan to guide their skills improvement.

Methods

The workshop is hands-on and includes a mix of multiple interactive lectures, polls, individual & group assignments, discussions, and question & answer sessions.

Competences

An important part of preparing for any further professional step is becoming (more) aware of the competences you have developed and/or want to develop. In the current workshop, the following competences from the UHasselt competency overview are actively dealt with:

• personal effectiveness:
  • self-development
  • self-confidence
• interpersonal competences:
  • networking
  • (interdisciplinary) collaboration
• intellectual competences:
  • problem solving
• Task-orientedness:
  • organisation
  • coordination

For whom?

• PhD students & postdocs - 14 places available
• oriented towards starting PhD researchers

When & where?

• July 7 & 8, 2025 - 09:00-17:00
• campus Diepenbeek, Building D, A4
• Participation on both days is required.

Preparation?

About 10 days before the workshop, participants will receive an email explaining how to prepare. This mainly concerns filling out a questionnaire to assess current academic skills.

Registration?

• Registration is possible via this link from February 27 until June 16, 2025. 
• Please register only if you can attend both days.
• As places are limited, registering does not automatically imply that you will be able to participate. You will be notified by email after the registration deadline has passed.
• Please cancel your registration at least one week in advance in case you cannot make it (cf. cancellation & no-show policy).

Acknowledged as?

• DS BSH: category 'career management & personal development' - workshop aimed at personal development
• DS HLS: category 'transferable skills' - compulsory elective course
• DS ST: category 'career & personal development' - workshop on personal development